FlashProtect: Mission-Critical ResiliencyWhen downtime or performance loss is simply NOT an option

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ND* Non-Disruptive everything

When a storage array hosts 100s of applications, there’s no such thing as an outage window.

What We Do

How We Do It

Why We’re Different

Non-DisruptiveCapacity Expansion

Capacity can be expanded by adding another storage shelf to an existing array via SAS cabling.

Most flash appliances are fixed capacity – expansion is difficult or impossible.

Scale-out flash devices require expensive processor & memory additions with each capacity expansion. With the FlashArray just add a shelf to your current array.

Non-DisruptiveController Upgrades(Performance Expansion)

The FlashArray features clustered stateless controllers, where no persistent information is stored within the controllers, simplifying both HA and upgrades.

Flash appliances are non-upgradeable toasters, once you deploy them there is no way to expand performance. The FlashArray is based on the x86 architecture, allowing you to upgrade deployed hardware every 1-2 years. Pure Storage customers can upgrade the performance of their arrays annually, with no downtime.

Non-DisruptiveHardware Replacement

The FlashArray was designed with at least two of everything and no single point of failure, allowing for online maintenance or replacement of any failed component.

Flash appliances offer higher density by soldering chips directly inside custom form factors, delivering a platform that is either hard or impossible to service. What good is density if you can’t replace a failed flash module online?

Non-DisruptiveSoftware Updates

Because of the dual-controller, stateless design of the FlashArray, software can be non-disruptively upgraded without ever failing a host IO.

Flash technology is on a rapid pace of advancement, and software updates are a reality for any product. Since the FlashArray can maintain full performance with only one controller, software updates are not only non-disruptive to availability, but also to the performance of applications.

…All withZero Performance Impact

Although the IO handling of the FlashArray is active/active from all ports on both controllers, the array’s performance is limited to one controller. This enables all maintenance operations to be performed with zero performance loss.

Traditional storage arrays and most flash appliances suffer from dramatic performance degradation in the face of drive failure/re-builds or controller loss. The FlashArray was designed for the highest-performance applications, where performance loss IS downtime, and can’t be tolerated.

Active / active high availability.

Designed for top performance - even through multiple failures.

Active / active IO handling

Linked via 56Gb/s Infiniband, the FlashArray’s clustered controller design allows for the complete failure of a controller or any controller component without impacting operations. Host IO can be simply configured to round-robin across all ports for easy multi-pathing and higher performance, and controller failover happens in <1 second to ensure no IO interruption for applications.

Mirrored NV-RAM to protect writes

Write IOs are persisted to non-volatile memory devices in the FlashArray, allowing writes to be asynchronously acknowledged to the host during deduplication while ensuring that in-flight writes are protected against power loss and device failure.

Hot-swap flash for easy serviceability

Many flash appliance designs pack TBs of flash in 1U or 2U containers, but sacrifice serviceability. What good is HA and RAID if you have to power the device down to replace failed components? The FlashArray's SSDs, NV-RAM devices, and controllers are hot-swappable for continuous operation, even when recovering from a failure.

Stateless controller architecture

The FlashArray's controllers are completely stateless - simply unplug a failed controller, cable up a new one (arrives via 4-hour onsite delivery), and the FlashArray is back to full-availability, all without any application downtime.

RAID-3D™

Device failure.

Although non-mechanical, flash SSDs can still fail, for both hardware and software/firmware- related issues. RAID-3D protects against simultaneous dual-drive failure, and re-builds around failures automatically within minutes.

Bit errors.

Flash is more vulnerable to bit errors (failure to return the correct data that was stored) than their predecessor hard drives. RAID-3D uses independent checksums and dedicated parity to detect and heal around bit error issues.

Performance variability.

Flash SSDs are complex systems in themselves, and their garbage collection mechanisms lead to variable latencies. RAID-3D treats performance variability just like a failure, and uses parity to work- around potential bottlenecks to deliver consistent latency.

Dive deeper?

Pure Storage CTO and co-founder, John Colgrove, describes RAID-3D at Tech Field Day.

Always-on encryption

In a modern storage array, there’s no reason to have to “choose” security. The FlashArray isalways securing data via encryption, with no key management or performance loss.

Always encrypting,all the time.

In legacy storage arrays encryption was a pain: it required additional hardware, licenses, and usually came with a performance penalty. The FlashArray doesn’t force these trade-offs – it is always encrypting 100% of its data at rest, protecting against drive theft or loss in transit/maintenance.

Inline with no performance penalty.

The FlashArray uses a combination of software-based and ASIC-accelerated encryption to protect data both in the flash & NV-RAM tiers. The encryption is inline, always-on, and has no impact on performance.

Zero key management.

Who wants to deal with complex key management? The FlashArray uses a patent-pending internal key management scheme that provides security without user intervention.